Gail Alexan­der

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s San Fer­nan­do West unit has de­nied that a meet­ing which PNM can­di­date Faris Al-Rawi held in Bel Air re­cent­ly went “bust”.

At Thurs­day’s UNC “On the Bal­lot” meet­ing, Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed Al-Rawi want­ed to hold a “cock­tail par­ty” and that PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley had planned to hold a “lime” among their cam­paign plans. She said that was grotesque con­sid­er­ing what peo­ple were suf­fer­ing and they (PNM) should do like UNC can­di­dates and go out to the peo­ple

On Fri­day, how­ev­er, PNM San Fer­nan­do West cam­paign man­ag­er Ter­rence Beepath said the unit had a cot­tage meet­ing in Bel Air re­cent­ly for which 40 in­vi­ta­tions were is­sued. He said 18 peo­ple ar­rived ini­tial­ly and two oth­ers did sub­se­quent­ly. It was the day af­ter the lat­est COVID scare and there was heavy rain, he not­ed.

“It was pitched to peo­ple, in that im­me­di­ate neigh­bour­hood and wasn’t planned as a very large meet­ing. We al­so know the UNC held a sim­i­lar meet­ing in Bel Air al­so at the home of a known ac­tivist and on­ly eight peo­ple showed up,” he claimed.

Al-Rawi won the seat in 2015 with 10,112 votes - with a lead of 3,310 votes - over UNC’s Razia Ahmed 6,802.

Beepath pro­ject­ed Al-Rawi “would win the seat by a land­slide” this time around.

He al­so claimed UNC’s San Fer­nan­do West can­di­date Sean Sobers hadn’t gained the type of trac­tion the par­ty had ex­pect­ed. “Their par­ty hasn’t been speak­ing suf­fi­cient­ly enough on what peo­ple in San Fer­nan­do want to know about and want de­tails on,” Beepath said.

How­ev­er, UNC’s Kevin Ram­nar­ine, who’s ap­peared on Sobers’ plat­form said, “San Fer­nan­do West is at the epi­cen­ter of the over­all na­tion­al eco­nom­ic de­pres­sion. That was the case be­fore COVID-19 and it was made worse by COVID-19.

“There’s strong sen­ti­ment against the in­cum­bent MP, peo­ple feel he’s hard­ly been seen in the last five years - that’s work­ing in UNC’s favour.’’

Ram­nar­ine al­so said the PNM ap­peared to have a low key cam­paign in the Aranguez part of the St Joseph seat and the El So­cor­ro side of San Juan/Barataria since “... I haven’t seen even a red hand­ker­chief any­where there...the UNC is poised to win and cur­rent­ly I can say it has more than 21 seats...”